I don't like the title of this article, but the author makes some great points. "Less efficient" or "less productive", might be better descriptors. "Less satisfied with their work lives" might be better yet.

Is Email Making Professors Stupid?

It's not just academia that has this problem. Back in the day, before cell phones and before e-mail, I sat through two full days of "Day Timer Training" as was required by my benevolent employer. I resisted at the time, but you want ruthless efficiency in how you schedule your work then Day Timer training is for you. Every 15 minutes of every day is blocked out from wake up to sack time, and if answering the phone is not included in that block of time you let it ring. It really works, provided the organization you work for has fully signed on to the notion.

Cell phones (I called you five minutes ago! Are you screening my calls?) and e-mail (Response required prior to 10 AM) blew all of that fine training right out the window. I still block out work time (turn off phone, avoid email and internet) but it's very hard to do these days. It's not how business works. ("If you can't be counted on to respond in a timely fashion we'll have to find someone else," this after a one hour lapse between an email and my response to it.) I proposed that they do just that, but I am old and cranky and I own the means of production. I doubt most corporate drones - or academics - are at liberty to do that most of the time and in reality neither am I.

A couple of quotes from the article stand out:

quote:

As the economist Peter G. Sassone observed in the early 1990s, personal computers made administrative tasks just easy enough to eliminate the need for dedicated support staff — you could now type your own memos using a word processor or file expenses directly through an intranet portal. In the short term, these changes seemed to save money. But as Sassone documents, shifting administrative tasks to high-skilled employees led to a decrease in their productivity, which reduced revenue — creating losses that often surpassed the amount of money saved by cuts to support staff.

This. The way I work now is much different from how I worked in the early '80's when I had a personal assistant. I was much more efficient in those days, but the definition of efficiency has changed over time. Now I'm so efficient I don't need a personal assistant and I don't get much work done.

quote:

Email has become a kind of digital water torture for the scholar struggling to think without interruption.

The hell of it is that I know that and still can't resist checking it several times a day. I get dozens of emails a day - most of them of little value - and I have friends in the corporate world who refuse to answer personal email because they get hundreds of emails a day and don't want anything to do with it when they get home.

I suspect this will all settle out at some point, and once I figure out what that point is I plan to be an early adopter.

Or retired.

Ha! I still have the book! It's not sparking much joy these days; as you can see by 1999 I had stopped using it. That's probably close to when I got my first cell phone.

That book looks a little like the current day bullet journal.

Miss my old Filofax.

I still use a paper date book. It only schedules work and appointments, not daily routines, but works for me. Cost me a whopping $6 from CVS. I've used a yearly date book for as long as I can remember.

It's better to note dates on paper, Real Player. For one thing, relying on the (unreliable) Yahoo calendar reminders has led me to miss several doctors appointments. (Also to celebrating birthdays early and even arrive a week early for some appointments!)

I am stalemated somewhere between letter writing and "real" (telegraphic) emails, meaning I still write excessively long emails. (Just kidding myself they're being read.)

I also text in whole words and have never even Tweeted.

You don't have to read journal studies to KNOW this is doing bad things to younger folks' brains, kids especially. (It's not a myth that the top Silicon Valley execs forbid their kids to use screens until High School.)

I remember a couple who were known to send each messages via a certain forum even when they were in bed at night (they are no longer married. Nuff said.)

We've had to establish service standards for our office to (in part) keep people from expecting instantaneous call backs or replies. We basically say that we will get back to them in 24 hours. Lots of people have that in their signature line or even as an auto-response (like an out of office memo) attached to their email account.

Because it's insane.

PS Yes, it IS an addiction - duh! (Trying to resist the temptation of signing up for internet addiction therapy - online, for convenience, of course! )

Often thinking in emoticons - and resenting sites that miss certain equivalents (Hey, when did FB drop hug and barf emoticons?) Expecting that before long there is bound to be a version of sign language showing them amid actual speech. Guess there's a small plus in that it will allow for more international communication sans Babel.)

quote:

Originally posted by Amanda:
It's better to note dates on paper, Real Player.

What finally works for me is to enter appointments on the phone in Outlook. Not only do I get a record of the the appointments, I get notifications ("alerts") reminding me of the appointment a day or two before the appointment and again an hour or two before. The notifications show up on both my desktop and my phone.

Oh how I hate email.

I start work around 3 pm as a rule. On most days I cannot do any real serious programming until 6 or 7 pm because I have clients in the midwest. It's impossible to build up the scaffold of a programming task in your head if you're going to be interrupted every 5 to 30 minutes. It's a waste of time, increases the likelihood of errors, and it's a brain drain. And I don't have the option of "turning off" from my work emails.